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London - A Reading List

We thought we’d give new Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, a hand by making him a reading list of books exploring the challenges and joys of living in London.

We’re firm believers that there are very few problems that can’t be solved, or at least temporarily escaped, by reading a good book.

With this in mind we thought we’d give new Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, a hand settling into the new job by making him a reading list of books exploring the frustrations, joys and peculiarities of living in the capital.

Ben Judah

Over one third of Londoners were born abroad, with half arriving since the millennium. This work explores the new London: an immigrant city. In Judah’s eyes a transformed capital, for better and for worse.

This is London explodes fossilized myths and offers a fresh, exciting portrait of what it's like to live, work, fall in love, raise children, grow old and die in London now.

Craig Taylor

As Told by Those Who Love it, Hate it, Live it, Left it and Long for it.

Here are the voices of London - rich and poor, native and immigrant, women and men – as witnessed by Craig Taylor who spent five years exploring the city and listening to its residents. These voices and many more, paint a vivid, epic and wholly fresh portrait of Twenty-First Century London.

Jonathan Raban

How is it that the noisy, jostling, overwhelming metropolis leaves us at once so energized and so fragile? In this travel writing classic, one of our most acclaimed novelists and travel writers seeks to find out.

First published in the 1970s, Raban’s account is a compelling exploration of urban life: a classic in the literature of the city, more relevant to today’s overcrowded planet than ever.

Iain Sinclair

A Day's Walk Around the Ginger Line

Echoing his journey in London Orbital over a decade ago, Iain Sinclair narrates his second circular walk around the capital exploring modern London through a day's hike around the London Overground route.

Ian Nairn

Widely considered the quintessential - if highly opinionated - guidebook to the capital.

A meditation on a city and its buildings, including railway stations, synagogues, abandoned gasworks, dock cranes, suburban gardens, East End markets, Hawksmoor churches, a Gothic cinema and twenty-seven different pubs, it is a portrait of the soul of a place.